Sardinia as part of the Southern Romance group in Europe
The Southern Romance languages are a primary branch of the Romance languages.
According to the classification of linguists such as Leonard (1980) and Agard (1984), the Southern Romance family is composed of Sardinian, Corsican, and the southern Lucanian dialects.[1]
This theory is far from universally supported. In fact, the majority of linguists classify Corsican, including Gallurese and Sassarese as its dialects, as part of Italo-Dalmatian and closely related to Tuscan or the centro-southern Italian dialects,[2][3][4][5][6][7] because of the island's considerable degree of tuscanization during the Middle Ages, leaving Sardinian as the only remaining representative of the branch once the African Romance dialects had gone extinct,[8] unless the southern Lucanian dialects are also classified as part of this branch, as they show some important traits in common with Sardinian.
Ethnologue and Glottolog, which support the Southern Romance theory,[9][1] propose the following classification (with Glottolog considering South Lucanian and Sardo-Corsican to be branches of Southern Romance and Ethnologue considering Sardo-Corsican to be synonymous with Southern Romance), which is not endorsed by other linguists in light of the structural differences between these languages. Corsican, for example, is otherwise classified as an Italo-Dalmatian language, and Gallurese, like Sassarese, as a (southern) Corsican dialect (with influences from Logudorese Sardinian) or a transitional variety between Corsican and Sardinian. However, the southern dialects of Corsican as well as Gallurese and Sassarese display Sardinian-like vocalism (see Romance languages § Dialects of southern Italy, Sardinia and Corsica).
^Guarnerio P.E. (1902). Il sardo e il còrso in una nuova classificazione delle lingue romanze. AGI 16. p. 491-516.
^Tagliavini C. (1972). Le origini delle lingue neolatine. Bologna: Pàtron. p. 395.
^Manlio Cortelazzo (1988). Gliederung der Sprachräume/Ripartizione dialettale, in Lexikon der Romanistischen Linguistik (LRL IV), edited by G. Holtus, M. Metzeltin e C. Schmitt, vol. IV, Tübingen, Niemeyer. p. 452.
^«Sardinian is the only surviving Southern Romance language which was also spoken in former times on the island of Corsica and the Roman province of North Africa.» Georgina Ashworth (1977). World Minorities. Vol. 2. Quartermaine House. p. 109.
